Archive for April, 2008
One day last week, I sent two emails one right after the other. The first was to students at Saint Anselm College about their research in the fall. The second was to students at Pyeongtaek University about their midterm this week. Yesterday I received two emails, one right after the other. The first asked, “Could you give a talk in Busan South Korea on May 13th?” The second asked, “Could you give a talk in Manchester NH on July 13th?”
We all live in both the present and the future. Some of us, particularly historians, also spend a lot of time in the past. I feel like all my time right now is spent “in between”.
Anyone who lives abroad with the intention of coming home lives in this “in between” space. You keep up friendships, professional connections, and sometimes a place to live in two different countries. You speak two languages. You negotiate the little things that constantly remind you that you have a dual life.
Last night I was dead tired and just wanted to watch one quick episode of the Muppet show on DVD before bed. But the previous DVD I had watched was Korean. So the computer had to reset my DVD player from Zone 3 (Korea) to Zone 1 (USA). If you do this more than 4 times your DVD locks forever in a certain zone. Since I wanted to be sure to be locked into Zone 1 (my permanent residence) I had to count the number of times I’d done this. It was a lot for a very tired brain to handle (though watching Dr. Teeth and the Electric Slide sing New York State of Mind was worth it.)
Last week I uploaded an Itunes gift card to my account and thought about buying music. It turns out you cannot buy music from Itunes if you have a Korean internet provider. This was also true when I tried to upgrade my spyware program. There is no way to tell the unyielding computer screen, “But I’m American. I have an American credit card. I’m not Korean!”
I recognize that I have made this “in between” feeling worse by spending so much time really trying to understand and live within Korean culture. Some people adapt by simply never leaving the “ex pat bubble” of speaking English, eating American food, and hanging out with Americans. I didn’t want that. Over time, moving back and forth from Korean to American customs (and language) has become much easier and has been totally worth it. But with only two months left here in Korea, I find the balance shifting. While I am still learning about Korea, I find myself missing home (and having to deal with home) more and more.
Many scholars have spent their lives studying “liminal” spaces - spaces in between one thing and another. They claim they are some of the most productive and interesting places in the world - biologically, intellectually, politically. For me, living in the borderland between America and Korea, between where I am and where I was and will be, has been remarkably productive. It is also increasingly unsettling.
[I do not have recent pictures of my in between space. These are of an in betweeen time, the pink and white full spring between bare trees and green ones.]
April 24, 2008
This is a “just in case you were worried” public service announcement.
Bird flu is spreading rapidly among poulty in South Korea at the moment. The latest outbreak is in my town, on an isolated chicken farm. The national alert level has been upgraded from yellow (alert) to orange (alarm) and all poulty within three miles of an infected farm is being slaughtered by members of the Korean army.
While the strain of bird flu is the most virulent, and the only one known to infect humans, there is extremely low risk of anything happening to me. You really need to be a chicken farmer to be at risk. There is a poultry farm on my daily walk, but I am avoiding it. It does not have any birds at the moment. I am avoiding all food with raw eggs, and ensuring that any eggs I do eat are cooked to over 164 degrees F, the temperature that kills the bacteria. This is also true for chicken. I am also, just in case, avoiding all the cats in my neighborhood, since they eat raw birds when they can get them and can be a disease carrier.
We now return you to your previously scheduled activities, hopefully without worry.
April 21, 2008
Waegwan is a small but rapidly growing town, about 2 ½ hours southwest of Seoul and one hour north of Busan. The Abbey backs up against the U.S. military base Camp Carroll, where the few remaining German monks sometimes eat breakfast. There is a 1909 Catholic church and about 15 other buildings. There used to be a large, welcoming chapel, but a catastrophic fire on Good Friday last year burned the chapel and half the monastery building. While no one was hurt, the abbey is scarred and the gardens have given way to ripped earth and twisted concrete. Daily prayers are sung against the rhythm of a pile driver breaking up concrete foundations.
When I arrived at Waegwan, I was a bit overwhelmed by my own unconscious assumptions. Even though I had read about Waegwan’s growth and success, I expected a small place like Saint Anselm. 
Physically, it is smaller than campus, but its reach is international and its outlook is global. The monks are part of the Ottilian branch of the Benedictine family (there are 21 branches). The missionary vision of that house infuses life at Waegwan. Abbot Simon Ri kindly explained the history of the place, mentioning visits with two Popes, annual travels to European conferences, and work with the government in China. This fall, Waegwan will host the international gathering of Benedictine Catholic abbots. Even after 8 months in Korea, I had ignorantly assumed a Korean monastery would be somehow “underdeveloped,” regional, limited. Instead Korean seminaries are packed, graduating 150-180 priests a year, and Waegwan exports gold vessels for mass, stained glass, Catholic publications, and even monks. In addition, there are more than 500 oblates (lay people pledging a vow to a monastery) at Waegwan with hundreds on a waiting list.
My experiences with Benedictines suggest that prayer, food and hospitality, not always in that order, are central aspects of Benedictine life. Here are three stories about those things at Waegwan:
A petite Korean woman in a polyester warm up suit and purple high top sneakers entered the chapel. She sat with 20 other women and a few men, all on retreat. There were 55 monks at the front of the room, in six long lines. A few were German, white faces amid Koreans. The monks ranged in age from early twenties to late seventies. Two whole rows of monks looked like a college basketball team.
Vespers on Friday night, followed by Compline. Matins Saturday morning. Midday mass on Saturday, then Vespers Saturday night. Matins Sunday morning. We followed the traditional Benedictine rhythms, singing the psalms, hearing Bible readings, standing, bowing, sitting, standing, bowing. My legs burned from the exercise, but I realized it was keeping me awake and alert despite the earliness or lateness of the hour. When mass began, the polyester and high-top wearing woman reached into her purse and pulled out a delicate lace “mantilla”. Carefully she covered her head. As if snow had started to fall in the chapel, white lace coverings fluttered onto dark heads bowed in prayer. A few younger women sat uncovered, but even they never crossed their legs. While the head covering may be an imported western tradition, the other is pure Confucianism. A respectful Korean never crosses their legs before their elders, or apparently before God. The prayer began. “Aboji,…” Aboji means Father. It is one of the few Korean words that sounds anything like Latin - Abba, Abbot, Father. I wonder if this is a coincidence.
After almost every prayer service there was a meal. I ate alone or with one monk in the guest house dining room. My guide and dinner companion was Brother Luke, who also oversees the kitchens. Fresh-baked white bread, orange slices of cheese in plastic, homemade strawberry jam, and hot frothing milk arrived with every meal. These seemed to be standard fare, not chosen for the visiting American. At my first meal enough food arrived to feed 6. Gradually the portions were scaled back but I still left more food than I ate. When Korean and Benedictine hospitality meet, it is a formidable event.
Let me stress here, that I still look the way most of you remember me. I am 15 pounds lighter and my hair is longer, but as you can see from the pictures on flickr.com, I look like me. This will be relevant in a minute.
At the last service of my last day, I was the only non-monk in the chapel. All the retreat participants had gone home. The only non-monk, the only woman, the only foreigner - I was definitely wondering if I had read the program wrong and broken some rule! But no one asked me to leave. After the last prayer finished and all but one monk had left, I headed for the exit. The last monk asked me to wait. Each day he had brought me a prayer book, with each song and reading marked with a series of ribbons. He did not seem to notice that I never turned pages when everyone else did, or that I did not sing. I was still reading line one when the monks responded to line seven, and it took two days for me to puzzle out the Korean word for “prayer’. Yet today he had seemed terribly startled when he handed me the prayerbook. I had worried about it during the entire service.
“Will you be joining us for prayer every day?” he asked in English. “No I have to leave today,” I answered. “Thank you for preparing the prayer book for me.” “Ah,” he said, looking suddenly embarassed, “I thought you were Korean.”
Welcoming the stranger as Christ and the American as Korean - that is _really_ Benedictine hospitality.
April 17, 2008
The following is a true story. I have only made up some of the facts.
On a late afternoon in 1950, a Benedictine army chaplain stepped off a train in Seoul, South Korea. Or maybe he stepped off the train months before and was working in an army camp. Four other men stepped off the train, into the army camp. Perhaps they were wearing black robes with hoods, perhaps not. They were Benedictines just the same. The army chaplain asked from where they had come. “North Korea” they answered, “we have been thrown out. We were the lucky brothers. All the fathers were killed.”
The army chaplain called the bishop who called an abbot who called a meeting. In two years a new monastery was created for these North Korean monks. They thought they would soon head back. New monks vowed stability to a place they had never seen. They still have not been back. After 50 years, they celebrated what they had accomplished - six dependent houses, 3 retreat centers, 5 hospitals, 30 churches, 2 high schools, 2 middle schools, a retirement village, more than 150 monks, artisan workshops for gold, stained glass and wood, and a major Catholic press.
But they had not forgotten that chaplain. In preparation for their celebration, a few monks and nuns came to the U.S. to visit him. They told him he was remembered as an honored founder. His confreres were shocked. They had long assumed those good, old stories, so well-told and funny, could not possibly be true!
The chaplain became Abbot Gerald McCarthy of Saint Anselm Abbey. He died just after those Benedictines visited and vindicated his stories. I arrived at Saint Anselm College later that fall, but I did not hear the stories until seven years later.
On a late afternoon in 2008, a teacher stepped off a train in Waegwan, South Korea. She was met by a man in blue jeans, but he was Benedictine just the same. She was chasing stories. I’ll post more of them soon.
April 16, 2008
In a few days I will post a blog about the amazing trip I took this weekend. I intended to stay one night, which turned into two. Benedictine monks are very hospitable. But after two days in the same clothes, a three hour train trip, and a smoky taxi, I really just wanted to be at home. So when I reached my door and could not find my keys, I had to take a deep, deep breath to keep from losing it.
Living in a foreign country gives you few chances to just lose it (but many chances to lose things). So when a thorough search of everything I had with me turned up no keys, I had to figure out what to do next. Go to the apartment office? Closed on Sunday. Call the University? Closed on Sunday. OK….now what? Figuring I had nothing to lose (and nothing else to try), I entered the little room near the apartment office that was full of pople. How does one explain this situation without the words for “key” “lost” or “locked-out”? I used a little Korean, a lot of English, some full-body acting and a pleading look - which would have been much harder if I had reached anyone by phone.
By sheer luck I had run into a group of apartment building staff cooking for a large picnic on Monday. They had no access to keys, but they knew all the right people to call. Within 15 minutes, they had tried the owner of my apartment (not home), the University (nobody there), and a locksmith; the last arrived within the hour. Thank goodness I had not locked the security lock, which would have been a $150 charge. For $10, the locksmith basically picked my lock (which was depressingly easy - guess I’ll be locking that security lock in the future!). I paid him, entered the apartment, and in the safety of anonymity, sat down and cried.
But I knew I was not done yet. I pulled myself together, went to the nearby market and bought three kinds of fruit (cherry tomatoes count as fruit here). I walked back to that gathering with my thank you gifts and was warmly welcomed. “You are home, now?” they asked in Korean. They cleared me a spot on the floor, made me tea, and offered me food. Then I began to understand what they had been telling me earlier, but I could not hear through my worry and frustration. Almost all of them had seen me before, and all knew me. I am one of the only white foreigners in my building - I’m hard to miss. But according to them I am the only foreigner who smiles, who tries to speak Korean, who bows when meeting elderly men - I am the “good American”. While they probably would have helped any one who looked as bedraggled and frustrated as I did, they were particularly glad to help me. When I finished my tea, I thanked them again and headed back to my apartment. Then I cried some more, but for a different reason.
One could probably learn many lessons from the day’s events (other than the most obvious: get some spare keys made and put one in my wallet!). I was reminded how hard, how frustrating and how confusing it is to live far from home, where I do not know who to call or even the words I need, and where I only understand half of what I am told. Yet, I am also struck by how easy it is sometimes, how good people are, and how little they want from a “good American”. This whole day will be pretty darn funny in retrospect - it began at 4 am with an overflowing toilet, which should have warned me right there. But at the moment I am simply grateful for a big problem made small by good people, smiles, and bows.
April 13, 2008
The first time a student asked if I had heard about “Emtee” I was baffled. What was this odd sounding Korean word? But “MT” is a student and corporate employee tradition that mixes bonding exercises, motivational talks and late night drinking. In some cases the drinking has overshadowed the rest of the point, so much so that Pyeongtaek University actually discontinued MT this year. So I approached our unofficial “department seminar” this past weekend with excitement and trepidation.
What struck me first and foremost was that this retreat was organized by and for the students. They chose the date, raised the money, hired the bus, rented the retreat center, organized all the activities, designated leaders for every conceivable purpose, and mostly remembered to keep the faculty informed of the plan. We were honored guests.
Second, I was struck by the amazing graciousness of the students, because we were guests. When other students failed to show up on time, at least 20 students apologized to me for our late departure. When we arrived, a student leader tried to keep everyone on the bus for 10 minutes waiting for a car to come drive me up the steep 300 yards to the retreat center. (After two hours on the bus, I was grateful to walk, though it took some careful wording to make this clear to the student). I never lacked for a cup of water or a student willing to translate. To be fair, I did only get 3 days notice that they needed me to give a 20 minute lecture - and one faculty member got 10 minutes notice!
What did we do? We sat in groups, chose team titles, and created banners. We drew portraits of people in our group, gave them nicknames (mine was “Grace Woman”), and interviewed them so we could introduce them to others. The students played bonding games and held competitions. My favorite was “Guess which student is eating a wasabi sandwich and which is just faking it.” Late in the evening people floated from group to group, this one playing drinking games, that one debating soccer teams, another talking about their English linguistics homework due tomorrow. Students cooked ramen noodles, kimchee stew and other traditional student foods at 11 pm and most stayed up until 3. I conked out at 2.
I did give my lecture. I used my engagement ring as a material object through which we could study international trade, American culture, migration, oral history, and personal biography. My point was the interdisciplinary nature of American Studies, and the power of curiosity and background knowledge. The American Studies program here tries to give students the latter. If they bring a willingness to ask questions, ordinary objects are windows to the world.
At 11 pm, I was suddenly informed it was time for me to sing. Had anybody mentioned this earlier? Billy Joel to the rescue! I belted out his “Uptown Girl,” which amazingly almost every student knew. Nothing makes you feel like a rock star like 70 screaming, cheering, singing, dancing students egging you on. I also helped to judge the Miss Santa Maria contest. By tradition, each group dressed up one freshman male in women’s clothing. The men then competed in song and dance routines. You have not lived until you have seen your male students in jury-rigged miniskirts doing a pole dance - with an elderly coat rack.
MT required only two things of me - partial surrender of control and temporary suspension of cultural judgment. That pretty much defines my experience of Korea. Taking risks, trying new things, and postponing judgment have given me space to have experiences I never would have thought to try. Supportive students and colleagues have made that process feel safe. This weekend, I was surprised to discover I really am a valued “member” of the team. It is an honor, though it makes the reality of leaving even more bittersweet.
(There are more pictures in the MT set at http://www.flickr.com/photos/10642665@N04/sets/72157604409909881/ . I will add more as I get them from the students. Hopefully no one took any photographs of me singing!)
April 7, 2008
Democracy in Korea is only 21 years old. The contrast between a thousand years of monarchy, 40 years of colonial control, 20 years of dictatorship and 20 years of democracy was made vividly real for me this week.
First, I went to a presentation on the Gwangju uprisings in 1980. In 1979 Korea’s second President and first dictator was assassinated. Hopes for democratic change swept the country and were rapidly put down by the third President Chun Doo-hwan, a military general. Students in southern Korea refused to stop protesting for greater democracy and the army massacred an unknown number of people. Students, women, children, bystanders, the elderly - everyone was a target, and therefore most people joined the protests. Eventually the town was placed under army rule. Since all of this was done with the knowledge, if not permission, of American authorities, residents of Gwangju remain actively anti-American. They had hoped for support for a new democracy and did not receive it.
Second, I went to one of Seoul’s many palaces. The English language tour guide regularly reminded us that Korea is now a democracy. “Here we are walking on the royal road,” she told us. “In the Joseon dynasty, only the king could walk on the central part. Commoners had to walk on the sides. However, we are now a democracy, so you can walk on the central part since in Korea the people are kings.” Later we came to a doorway called “doorway of prayers for long life.” The guide informed us that “Once this doorway was used only by royalty. That is why it is so tall, since only royalty did not need to bow before entering. However, in a democracy no one bows so you can all walk through the tall doorway and pray for your own long life.” What a vivid reminder of the power of the people in a democracy!
Third, Korea is in the middle of its Parliamentary election campaigning. The election is April 9. This is a hotly watched contest since originally the GNP (the President’s party) was expected to win easily, but now the opposition party has a good chance to prevent a sweep. Yet most of the people I know are remarkably indifferent about the elections. Voter turnout is expected to hit an all-time low. A sense that politicians are corrupt, that they do not represent the average voter, that only the wealthy can really run, that candidates are out of touch with daily reality, that there is no “good” candidate to vote for - all of these seem to be depressing voters and voter turnout.
In thirty years, Korea has gone from literally battling for democracy to being proud of having it to being disillusioned by its less than perfect form. I have asked dozens of people whether they think President Lee Myung-bak (criticized by some for being too authoritarian) could lead a slide back to dictatorship. Everyone agrees: “No, democracy is too entrenched here now.” But democracy requires an active, educated, engaged citizenship, vigilant in keeping an eye on its own best interests. I am struck by how quickly Korea has reached America’s levels of disenchantment, frustration, and unwillingness to participate. Perhaps we will be able to learn from however they deal with the isssue.
April 3, 2008
